Thursday, February 9, 2017

Door Closes, Window Opens

The Daring Novelist has been a fun ride, but it has drifted so far from its original purpose -- to track progress in a daily writing dare -- that the very name seems wrong.

For the past couple years I have been increasingly involved in what Dean Wesley Smith calls "life rolls": major stuff that happens in your life that you have to drop everything to respond to. It is now clear that much of this is not temporary, and so let's just say it will be a while before I can do anything resembling a novel dare.

At the same time, I have been fascinated for some time now with the rising tide of amateur writers -- that is, the culture hobbyists, artistes and part-timers who can now choose their own level of commitment and still publish. Writers who integrate their writing into a larger lifestyle, and live and write by their own rules.

Last year I coined a phrase for this: Wordsteading (here's the original wordsteading post). In my mind it's realated to the self-sufficiency and homesteading movements, (though it doesn't need to involve living off the grid and raising your own milk goats).

The writing parts of the blog won't be all that different, but the focus will be more on lifestyle (definitely lots of posts about self-sufficiency) and the business of writing will be more aimed at the amateur.

(Note: I'll probably update some posts from here to put over there. Also, this blog will remain "open" for if I ever decide to do a novel dare again. If that happens, I'll post updates here, but nothing else.)

1 comment:

I took a "sabbatical" in 2016 which meant I not only didn't blog, I didn't write much either, nor comment on social media. Life happens, and the world just kept turning. Sometimes you have to step aside and watch it from the wings for a while.

Just as I liked your idea of the Artisan Writer, I can see where you're at with Wordsteading. I'll just pop over to your new place and bookmark it now...

About Me

The Daring Novelist is the secret identity of mystery and adventure author Camille LaGuire.
Camille's work has appeared in publications such as Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine; Handheld Crime; Cricket, the Magazine For Children and Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine. Stories have been collected into anthologies, reprinted overseas, and in educational materials.
She's worked as a horse wrangler, fry cook, teacher, tech, editor, script analyst and even had play produced.

Random Number Generator

The numbers generated by this widget come from RANDOM.ORG's true random number generator.

About Advertising

Some of the links lead to Amazon.com. If you follow them and buy something, I will get a small share of the proceeds. Every penny of that will go into my Summer of Writing Fund, which will allow me to take some time off in the summer and concentrate on writing.

Or if you'd rather support this site directly, you can make a donation via Paypal: